This week, our hosts are joined by Dr. Bill Weiss from The Ohio State University and Dr. Mat Faulkner from Purina to discuss assessing mineral availability. This week’s podcast is a continuation of one of our most highly attended webinars in 2021. If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here: balchemanh.com/realscience.
Guests:
Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University
Dr. Mat Faulkner, Purina
Welcome back to the Real Science Exchange. Before we get started tonight, we’d like to share how you can get our t-shirts. There are three steps, either subscribe, follow or like the Real Science Exchange podcast on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube, take a screenshot and send it to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Include your name, shirt size and mailing address.
This week, our hosts are joined by Dr. Bill Weiss from The Ohio State University and Dr. Mat Faulkner from Purina. This week’s podcast is a continuation of one of our most highly attended webinars in 2021. If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here: balchemanh.com/realscience.
Dr. Bill Weiss is from The Ohio State University and has been doing research on minerals since 1978. Dr. Mat Faulkner was a graduate student under Dr. Bill Weiss. He earned his master’s at The Ohio State University and is now a nutritional consultant in Wisconsin for Purina.
Dr. Bill Weiss discusses the minerals that should not be combined in a diet and that there are many factors that should be taken into account while determining your rations. (00:10:01)
Both of the guests analyze exactly how much sulfur should be added into your cattle’s diet. (00:17:50) Dr. Bill Weiss reviews the dangers of overfeeding magnesium and copper. (00:34:20)
Dr. Mat Faulkner discusses the risks of toxicity in zinc and copper and the microbiome effect in the rumen. (00:46:08)
Both guest speakers analyze factors that may cause oxidative stress. (01:00:33)
Thank you to our loyal listeners for stopping by once again at the Real Science Exchange to sit with us just for a while. If you like what you heard, please remember to drop us a five-star rating on the way out.
This podcast is sponsored by Balchem Animal Nutrition and Health.
Scott Sorrell (00:00:03):
Good evening everyone. And welcome to the real science exchange, where industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Before we get started tonight, I'd like to share how you can get one of these very nice new, real science exchange t-shirts- I'll stand up so you can see it since I have to get that microphone out of the way. Very nice indeed. It has got our logo on there. Yours will look better on you than it does on me. I got a bit of a food blister going on here that kind of stretches things out. So don't worry, it it'll look pretty good. The way you can get one of these is very simple. Three steps: either subscribe, follow, or like the real science exchange podcast on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube, then send it to take a screenshot and send it to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Include your name, shirt size, mailing address.mAnd that's it. We'll send you this this cool t-shirt and we've got plenty of them. So I'm looking forward to sending those out. This week's podcast is a continuation of one of our most highly attended webinars in 2021, discussing the bioavailability of minerals and the impact that has on animal performance. In fact, that webinar had nearly 500 people join us live and in person, and to date over 600 people have viewed the webinar on our YouTube channel. If you'd like to go out and listen to it yourself you can find that recording at balchemanh.com/realscience and scroll down to the past webinars. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell one of your hosts for the real science exchange. Tonight, we're welcoming, welcoming Dr. Bill Weiss from The Ohio State University to the pub. Good evening, Bill. And thanks for joining us tonight. So Bill, what's in your glass and then tell us how did you get into researching minerals?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:01:59):
Well, I don't have a glass. I have a bottle Scott, and it’s a Spotted Cow. I've got a my, my former graduate student from Wisconsin, so I'm honoring him. All right. Am I, when I was, I did my undergrad at Purdue and as an undergraduate research, I don't even know what the title was...I worked on a selenium project with dairy cows. So that would have been in the mid seventies. So I've been doing mineral research since about 1978. And then when I got to OSU to do my PhD, my advisor then Dr. Conrad gave me some great advice and he said, don't become too specialized. So he said, you need to learn more than just, I was doing a protein study for my PhD, but he said, you need to learn more than protein. So, I started reading, he did a lot of work on minerals, so I followed what he did and then it just progressed from there.
Scott Sorrell (00:02:55):
Excellent. When, when did you arrive at Ohio State?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:03:00):
I started my PhD -would have been an ‘81. I graduated in ‘85. I went to North Dakota State for about two years. My old advisor's job when he retired, opened up. They asked me to apply and the rest is history. So been back since 88.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:17):
All right. Well, I graduated from there in 81, so we, we missed each other. I see you brought a guest with you here tonight. Would you mind introducing who that is?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:03:28):
I have to say formally here, Dr. Mat Faulkner with only one T. But he was my second to last graduate student. I retired here a couple months ago, but he was my second to last one PhD student. He did his, his project was on trace minerals. That's why I thought he'd be a really good fit for this program. He's currently, I don't know the exact title, but he's a nutrition consultant for Purina up in Wisconsin. Perry, I think he gets into Illinois as well. And he he's been there a couple of years. He graduated, I I'm guessing like five, six years ago now time flies.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:4:13)
So correct. 2016 we graduated, right?
Scott Sorrell (00:04:10):
Yeah. Well, thank you for bringing Mat with us. Mat, what are you drinking tonight? And also, what was one of your favorite memories or stories that you have from your time at Ohio State with Bill?
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:04:21):
So I I'm drinking a little bit, a gentleman Jack. Double charcoal mellowed, and the glass is actually a Jack Daniels glass and was a a gift from a former peer, Dr. Benjamin Winter, who is at The Ohio State University right now as a professor. Favorite story about Bill, like, you know, I've been thinking about this a little bit here, but it actually, it's a story that Bill, or a study that Bill had referenced in his talk when we did the fecal microbiome analysis. And I remember coming to Bill with the original you know, kind of data as just saying like, Hey, you know, we, we found a few different things in these fecal microbiomes. And one of them was the the, the spirochete, or spirochetes family of bacteria that were different. And then obviously, like I dug into them a little bit further and I realized that this is the same bacteria that goes along the lines of syphilis in humans and, and Bill, not many people know he has a great personality. His, his one-liners are Epic. He was like, well, it's a good thing that you're wearing a sleeve when you took those fecal microbiome samples. And just, just one of those things that had to make me chuckle.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:38):
Excellent. I love those old stories. Dr. Zimmerman, my co-host on the real science exchange is back with us once again at his usual stool. Clay, how's the hard cider going down today?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:05:54)
It is good. And in honor of Bill, I have a mug here. He might recognize. Scott, what are you drinking tonight?
Scott Sorrell (00:06:06)
I'm having, I'm kind of in a rut. I'm back to afour roses small batch a again, one of my go tos, but I like it. So I’m gonna will stick with it for awhile. Well, let's jump right into it with a question that is likely on everybody's mind. Bill, since you're on the Dairy NRC, what changes can we expect to see in minerals when the new NRC comes out?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:06:26):
I can't be specific because I can't say anything till actually out cause things, things can change at the last minute, but I'll just say we, we reviewed everything published since 2000 from the last one. We re-evaluated a lot of the data they used in the last one with, with newer statistical techniques. So there, it's not going to be revolutionary. It'll be improvements, fine, fine tuning. We think more accurate, in some cases some things obviously won't even change. But it should reflect, I think, most minerals will be just fine tuned and, and we'll be more accurate.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:08):
Hmm. Can you give us an update on when you expect to release the new NRC?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:07:14):
It's they have a very strenuous review process and it's gone through the first thing. And then now we have to satisfy, they call him the, the study monitor. He's a third, third party who looks at what we told the reviewers and decides whether we answered the questions or not. And we've addressed about, he's, he's finished about half the book. So half the book’s been approved. I got another chapter this morning actually from him. So we have a discover conference, I think the end of August . Everything is looking for it should be done. It may not be in print because printing takes a while, but it will be done. And, and maybe the electronic version will be available by then.
Scott Sorrell (00:08:01):
Yep. That was my understanding as well, is that you guys would be reviewing those at the next discover conference there in, I think it's either late August, early September. To kind of let everybody in on a secret, Bill is scheduled, assuming everything goes as planned, to actually present on the real science lecture series, the new Dairy NRC for minerals, and that'll take place on September 15th. So mark that down on your calendar, September 15th Dr. Weiss, a new dairy NRC for minerals. Dr. Weiss, during the webinar, you stated that it's very difficult to determine mineral absorption. What are the key factors impacting mineral absorption?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:08:44):
Well, a source, obviously. Amount in the diet in that with most minerals, there are some degree of regulation. So feeding more generally down-regulates absorption. Cow status, you know, a cow that's deficient tends to be a very efficient absorber of minerals. Whereas a cow in very good status is much less efficient . And diet, you know, there are minerals, and well most nutrients, but minerals, especially there's a lot of antagonists. So what? Is it the absorption coefficient for copper in one diet, and you throw some distillers in another diet with high sulfur, you're going to get a different absorption coefficient. So it's, it's not, it's a lot more complicated than people think, and there's no way we're going to be able to do enough experiments to quantify all these, all these interactions. So, there is going to be always some, some educated, guesswork and mineral supplementation.
Scott Sorrell (00:09:44):
So can you expand a little bit on the whole role of antagonists and what are some of those, what are some of the ones that, that, that nutritionists specifically need to be wary of and take into account when they're putting together dairy rations?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:10:05):
Well, the two real... well for one, we can put together diets that are antagonistic that are not practical. But the real world antagonist, the probably the biggest one is potassium and magnesium. And potassium, even fed below requirement, still antagonizes magnesium absorption. So you, you don't have to be high in, high in K. And if, if you are higher in K than requirements and most dairy diets are, we have to take that into account. The other biggest one in the real world is copper. High sulfur, how I should say high sulfate, antagonizes, and we're not sure if high sulfur from, from organic sources such as Methionine, antagonizes or not, but high sulfate clearly does. That's in distillers. A lot of the sulfur and distillers is actually sulfate, it's not Methionine. Water can be a really high source of sulfate. And forages, now if, if you're fertilizing with say ammonium sulfate, which has become more and more common, those forages are actually are high in sulfate.
(00:11:16):
And then the molybdenum one. And, and molybdenum by itself, isn't a major antagonist of copper. It does, can induce molybdenum toxicity, which mimics copper deficiency, but molybdenum plus sulfur is highly, highly antagonistic. But sulfur by itself is also antagonistic. And then other things like high iron can antagonize zinc, copper, and even manganese, but it has to be pretty high. So in, in the real world, that's not a biggie, but it can happen. Very high zinc can antagonize copper. But again, in the real world, that's likely not going to happen. High phosphorus antagonizes manganese. Sulpher antagonizes selenium. There's just a plethora of antagonists, but again, in the real world, worry mostly about copper and magnesium.
Scott Sorrell (00:12:17):
Hmm. So talking about the real world, that's, that's let's go over to Mat. And Mat, how are you dealing with the antagonists in your new job?
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:12:26):
Well, you know, and Bill set the plate very well. You know, well so the USDA crop report came out yesterday and I don't know if you follow the markets too much, but a soybean, soybean meal, and corn were all limit up. So when that stuff limit up, we need to be looking at alternative protein sources when we're feeding dairy cows. One of the things that's always been very prevalent is the distillers grains. And you know, like we can all talk about the butterfat exchange with the fat and the long chain, fatty acids or unsaturated fatty acids that come into play when we're talking about components. If you want to talk real world butter fats, not worth that much right now. So we don't talk about it, but the sulfur is the real thing. We know that distillers grains and some of those byproducts that we like to bring in as replacements are high in sulfur.
(00:13:14):
So I would say this is a very fluid situation, and what I do real-world every day when protein prices have been down the past two years you know, it, it, it doesn't really come into play. But now we're talking, Hey, bean meals 425 bucks delivered into a farm a, you know, distiller's grains before yesterday was about 225, you know, and there's obviously a little bit of change in the percent crude protein. But I think it's going to come into play more in the next year than it maybe has in the last two, because we're looking at feed costs and income over feed costs. So I think it's a, the sulfur thing is, is become very real. And at least in the, the sector that I work in which would be Southwest Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, and Eastern Iowa, I don't really run into them, molybdenum as much for the thiomolybdate formation of the, the molybdenum, sulfur and copper formation.
(00:14:09):
But you know, as, as we pump more sulfur into these diets, when we're looking for lower costs, crude protein options, I think it's going to come into play more than maybe I've experienced in my five years in the industry. So, you know, it, and it all becomes about the safety factors that Dr. Weiss talked about in his deal. Like I, in his talk it's, Hey, we need to have a strong safety factor to make sure that we're accounting for those. And don't forget about water. Dr. Weiss and I had a, an off the book conversation last night, or off, off the recording conversation, just about some, some of the differences that can happen with water turnover, whether you're dealing with table water, pond water, or different things and some of the changes that I've experienced, or switches that I've experienced in the industry.
(00:14:57):
So, you know, I guess it's an ever fluid situation in the dairy nutrition world. We, we go with price, everything's about income over feed costs. And as these margins start to shrink, you look for ingredients that can replace your standard ingredients at a lower cost, and you still don't affect performance. But when we start doing that, you need to take in these little nuances such as the trace mineral and even the macro mineral, and especially the antagonist, antagonistic effects that these can have that could result in larger problems down the road.
Scott Sorrell (00:15:35):
Hmm. So Mat, what do you specifically do if you find you've got a lot more sulfur coming into the diet? Are you just simply elevating the mineral quantity?
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:15:45):
I think first and foremost, you need to identify where the sulfur source is coming from. You know, there there's differences in the sulfur types, in the sulfur forms. So is it, is it coming from water? Like, I think the sulfur in water is fairly highly available. Bill kind of did a nice job of laying out in his talk that there's a difference between a charge mineral and a non-charge mineral in terms of antagonistic effects. So is it a charge mineral that you think that you're dealing with and, and somebody better in chemistry could talk to you about ferrous or ferric or sulfate and sulfite and blah, blah, blah. So I think it's identify where they are, and sometimes dilution is the solution. You know, if I think that they're coming from the forages, do I really believe that that's a, you know, a positively charged or a negative, or excuse me, negatively charged ion state that is going to tie up the positively charged, trace minerals.
(00:16:36):
So I, again, I think every diet is different; every farm is different and. And for that aspect, every geographical location is different. So it becomes like specifying what I think I have, what I think I'm fighting. And then how am I going to overcome that? The simple answer is to overfeed. You know, I think Bill's recommendation in his talk was you know, 1.2 is a very convincing safety factor. You know, with something like copper, it can be very detrimental and that maximum, maximum tolerable limit where you don't want to have too much accrued in the liver. We know that stored in liver, and then in the stress event can be mobilized and start lysing red blood cells. And that's just not good for anybody. So it's, it's choosing the nutrient that you think is deficient, identifying where you think it's coming from and then making the correct adjustments over.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:17:34):
So, so sticking with that mineral topic, and I'd like to hear from both of you on this, but Bill we'll start with you. How.. so how much sulfur should be in our diets, you know, as on the minimum side and how much is too much?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:17:50):
Something you know, a dairy cow really does not require inorganic sulfur. There's bacteria that do- rumen bacteria needs sulfur. And so when we look at things like intake, fiber digestion- things that the rumen bugs effect, we come up to levels around 0.2%-0.25% total sulfur. Know that a lot of that is methionine and cystine. Some of it is inorganic, but a lot of it is in the protein fraction. And levels in that range, you know, 0.25%, not an issue. And, and 0.3%, even I'm going to make a few little tweaks. If I can't adjust, you know, I'd like to feed. Sulfur does other things bad other than just antagonize some minerals. But if I can't, I have to feed a 0.3% sulfur diet. I'm going to bump up copper a little bit. I'm probably going to feed some organic copper. I might feed some, some buffer to get the DCAD up where it should because, you know, sulfur sulfates in the DCAD equation, but at 0.3%, I'm not going to get too excited, but when it starts getting above 0.4%, that's when it becomes much more difficult to, to adjust around it. And remember this includes water. You're going to have to estimate water and take the sulfur in the water and add that into the diet. In most cases, water is marginal and sulfur, you really don't have to worry about it, but, you know, if it's, if it's 900 PPM sulfate, you, you got to worry about that. So...
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:19:31):
And I would agree with Bill and, and most aspects of that statement. And I, and I look at so part of my job is not only to feed cows, but also to support other staff that are feeding cows. And I have no concerns until we start seeing 0.3% sulfur in the just diet itself. And, and I don't disagree with what he said in the 0.4% with water, but most people don't check water. It's one of those unforgotten nutrients yet the most important, because, well, milk's 86% water. So if it's under 0.3% in the diet, I typically don't worry unless there's things that are telling me that I need to worry about it. And that means that I'm probably not going to make too many, too many mineral adjustments. That being said, Bill brought up a great point about buffers.
(00:20:18):
I, I don't see many diets, if any, at all that don't have at least a half a pound of sodium bicarb fed, or they've got free choice bicarb on the farm somewhere. So the 0.3% is kind of that, that flagship for me. And if we start getting that 0.4%, and this is obviously outside of the pre fresh diet, because we have all of these different DCAD products that are sold that can sometimes drive those up. But again, it's also, I think it's, it's very important to look at the specific ingredients. Like, where's that sulfur coming from? You know, am, am I feeding a large amount of distillers grains? And then you also need to assess what are your issues? Like, why do I think sulfur's an issue? Do I think it's a mineral issue that is driving this, or am I looking at a component response?
(00:21:08):
And I have a lot of distillers grains, and then it, it maybe goes down that unsaturated fatty acid. Or are we having some metabolic issues or some immune function issues. So immune function typically points me in the direction of, I think we might be off something in the trace or the, the vitamin world. And then, so then I look down that antagonistic world where if it's you know, maybe something more directed towards it that it's a butterfat issue. Well, that might direct me more towards the fat side of things. So I, every situation is different. And those flagships for me, it's, it's when we start in the lactating rations exceeding that 0.3%. And then again, I made the comment before, and Bill reiterated it, that I think everybody in the industry has done a better job of paying attention to water. But it's still often overlooked at the impact of those concentrations of, of antagonistic minerals can have on the effect of a diet. Especially when you start thinking lactating and high producing cows going to drink 30 to 40 gallons of water a day. And, and those, those mineral amounts might look minuscule when you're reviewing a water thing, but when you start putting them in at that level in the ration and they, they can really amount to, you know, 0.1% or 0.2%.
Scott Sorrell (00:22:26):
Yeah. Mat, does it make sense to, to take the minerals out of the water before giving it to the cattle?
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:22:33):
How do you do that?
Scott Sorrell (00:22:35):
Well, water softeners, right. I mean, I don't know if that's practical,
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:22:40):
Not at all. And you bring up a great point. Like I, I've seen so many different water systems. You know, to the, these points where these guys filter you know, into a big tank and do all, do all the other stuff. And I mean, it's a lot of times it's a cost thing. At the end of the day, we were judged on our effectiveness on income over feed costs. I had a dairy in Eastern Iowa that, I mean, they spent $150,000 on a water system to correct their iron and sulfur issues and, you know, and they just bit the bullet and did it. And then, you know, like there's all these peroxide treatments and then some chlorine doioxide, but the really interesting thing about water is, nobody has figured out a system that works for every farm and what works for one farm may not work for a farm that's two miles down the road, because they're in a different, you know, water table, you know, or they have different dietary ingredients.
(00:23:39):
You know, if you could come up with that, you could probably retire and print those shirts and just, just live a good life. So, you know, I think water treatment systems are, are very viable. But there's not a one catchall system. And, and I've, I've talked to these at great length with many different dairy farmers. And the thing is when you find one that works for your dairy, the one thing that I can honestly say is the most appreciable and immediate response that you can judge is components. A few dairies have struggled with components and put in a good system that works. My brother's a dairy farmer and the, the system that he put in, he had a peroxide system for many years drilled a new well, blah, blah, blah peroxide system didn't work, went into an enzyme, treated chloride chlorine dioxide system.
(00:24:31):
And you know, like we, we put water- or we put the treatment system in, and we took it out just to assess the effectiveness of it. And there was about 0.15% in butterfat component response within seven days of putting it in and taking it out. And then we did this on like each, like about every three week basis across the four-month span. So, you know, I, I think there's some ways to assess it, but when you don't see responses and you spend all that money, and trace minerals and deficiencies and excessiveness are, are very difficult to judge. And you want to talk to somebody about spending $100,000 or $150,000 on a water treatment system anually. It's, it's extremely difficult.
Scott Sorrell (00:25:16):
Bill, during the webinar, you talked a little bit about magnesium in the variability in magnesium. Can you expound on that just a bit?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:25:27):
People think Mag-Ox is a mind compound. They just dig it out of the earth. But it's not, it's a manufactured product. And I don't know exactly how to make it, but they have to cook it at extremely high temperatures. I think it's magnesium carbonate, then at 1200 degrees or something to make magnesium oxide, but don't, don't quote me on that. And that process is, is dependent on temperature and time. You cook it too hot, the bioavailability is terrible. If you cook it at too slow of a temperature, it's the bioavailability is terrible. Too long, too short: it's, it's not good. So, you know, these companies, if they don't want, they know what they're doing, and they're, you know, high quality control, they get it right. And they get good, good bioavailability. But Mag-Ox if they're just spitting out Mag-Ox without the quality control, it can be from, you know, the best Meg ox is probably 30% available. The worst is probably close to 0 because of the, and particle size also plays in here, but the calcination temperature and time and, and particle size are the major factors affecting availability. And those are manufacturing processes.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:26:55):
I got a question on the magnesium for Bill here. I was told this by, by a peer with about 30 years experience in the industry. And it, he, he had once told me that like the higher, the percentage of magnesium in the product..you know Mag-Ox is Mag-Ox to him at this point, but he said, you know, if it's 56% versus maybe a 54%, Mag-Ox that you can almost guess at the 54% would be more available because they had to dry the 56% longer to remove the impurities. You know, any comments or thoughts on that?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:27:28):
Good question. I don't know if it wasn't from you, but somebody else asked me that question about a month ago, and I actually dug through the literature and there was one old paper that would do, say that. Say that that the 54% was, had better availability than the 56%, but in another paper said just the opposite. So I won't say it's not, not involved, but I'd say there's other factors that are much, much more important than just whether it's 56% or 54% . This, this particle size and calcination, but so I won't, I won't say one is uniformly better than the other one. I just don't, I don’t know.
Scott Sorrell (00:28:06):
So what's a nutritionist to do? Should they have it tested? And if so, how do you do that?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:28:12):
That’s another question I used to get almost monthly. There are some field tests and, and, and Jesse Golf’s done a lot of magnesium work, and he has this... I don't know if he developed it or someone else where you, you get Mag-Ox and you put it in vinegar for a certain amount of time and you measure pH. And if, if the pH goes up fast, it's a more reactive and more bioavailable Mag-Ox. And the, the data correlating that in vivo is, is pretty limited. So I don't know how it's, it's, there's probably a correlation. In other words, if it, if the pH never goes up from 4 or 4.5 (what vinegar is), obviously the magnesium isn't available. But I don't know if it's going to be able to separate, you know, average mag-ox from great mag-ox.
(00:29:04):
It could separate junk mag-ox from good mag-ox, but you don't really know. So, you know, there are bio tests that you, you feed feed high levels of magnesium, collect urine, and measure magnesium in the urine. And that, that you can use that...that's not really practical in the real world. So what I tell people is: buy it from a supplier you trust, and there are, there is some very good magnesium (you pay for it!), but there's some very good magnesium oxide out there. I think it's worth a little bit extra to know what you're getting.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:29:39):
So, so a question on the science side for Bill on that, and I heard you mentioned that in your talk as well, like, and this is, this is a left field question. This is like grad student question that I would’ve asked you, like, in theory-
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:29:53):
I can’t answer those anymore. You've graduated!
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:30:04):
Well, you're still the macro man, so I'm going to ask it! You know, I realized there's a lot of buffering minerals that come through in the urine, but the urine should still be whatever pH in the lactating cow. You know, and you talked about the magnesium availability and urine, and if they're in excess, that, that, that should be coming through in the urine. So is there any, you know, like the vinegar test or, is there any tests like that that could be more of an applied test that you don't have to send off to a lab, don't have to spend the producers money or your money on a tight margin to, to figure out or is that something that like, I've just come up with a research topic for the next grad student?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:30:34):
It would be, you know, theoretically. High magnesium urine, if you feed a lot of magnesium and it's available and it goes out in urine, the pH should be higher, but the primary or the, one of the, I think it's primary is, is potassium is what really buffers, urine. And there's so much K in these cows that I don't know if we could see a response under practical conditions. Now, I don't know if you could feed enough magnesium to really alter that the urine pH.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:31:05):
What would you call so much potassium, like in a formulated ration? And what percentage would you consider too high, too?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:31:14):
Even at, even at 1.2/1.4 K, K goes out ..theoretically, a cows in K balance. It eats so much, and it gets rid of so much every day. Milk is a big pool, but the rest, almost the rest of it goes out in urine. And so even, you know, modest amounts, there's still a lot of K in urine and that's a good buffer. And that's what I'm just saying. I don't know if you can change the acidity of urine enough with magnesium to detect what you're wanting. It, it, theoretically it could, but I just don't know if it's sensitive enough.... not real practical, but if you go collect some cows, I don't know how many, but some cows; send it to a lab for magnesium. And then I'd probably analyze minerals, K, cause you need to adjust for a urine excretion somehow.
(00:32:09):
And we have a test in research labs that I don't think is practical, but I think if you do something like the magnesium decay ratio of cows fed the same diet, except for magnesium, everything else has to be the same. And if, if you're testing, if you've got two Mag-Ox and you want to see, is this one, any good? To feed the two different Mag-Ox's at, you know, you gotta get it up to maybe 0.4 magnesium, look at the K-magnesium ratio, and if they're the same for both, the bioavailability is the same. But if, if one of them has, and it wouldn't be this extreme, but 50% more magnesium than the other one, it's, it's clearly a superior source. So, you can kind of, you can't really quantify, but you can qualitatively evaluate sources. It's not easy, but you can do it.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:33:00):
I'd maybe say you taught me too well because I don't run any magnesium diets below 0.4 or 0.45.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:33:07):
Well then I think you're in good shape. It's I think too much, but it won't hurt them. It's just to me, I I'd put something else in its spot, but it's, it's, it is not hurting.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:33:18):
Well. And, and like, I, I remember the discussion. I won't call it a lecture because you weren't yelling. But you know, the discussion of those, like, you know, Mag-Ox's is fairly cheap, but then in the grand scheme of things and obviously source varies blah, blah, blah. But you know, like, and I I've experienced magnesium deficiencies in fresh cows. And, and early on in, in my professional career, I just realized that like, Hey, the few cents that I can spend on magnesium is as well worth not having to deal with that headache. And I, you know, I think NRC 2001 we'll see where 2000 and well you guys are in 21, maybe you'll make 22 you know, can come out. But you know, I think it was 0.35, maybe, you know, obviously it's nutrient concentration, which is relevant or not. But you know, like that, that extra little bit of magnesium it's .2- .025 pounds minimal compared to the headaches that we get when we talk about them that high.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:34:20):
Yeah. And I think that's a important thing here is you want to overfeed and the degree of any mineral, and the degree of overfeeding and I consider costs. And then you've got to consider risk. I say, with magnesium, there's no risk of excess at 0.4% or 0.5%… No, no risk at all to the cow. If you were talking copper at that degree of overfeeding, there's a significant risk to the cow. So look at these things and it's, if the cost isn't appreciable, you're going to say, I don't want to worry about being deficient. It's not worth my time. Then you overfeed, but think about risk and cost. And it's magnesium is one where I'm not going to fight with you, argue with you that it should be less. I am, mine would be less, but not that much less. It's all going to be substantially higher than the old NRC requirement where I feed substantially higher. But I would never do that with copper. Never, never go that much higher because the risk is too high on the excess side.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:35:24):
So Bill back, back to the, the lab tests and you were talking about a minute ago with magnesium: You're talking about analyzing the, the urine at the lab?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:35:34):
Yeah. You'd have to send it for mineral analysis, wet chemistry mineral analysis, and the things I, you know, when we do research, we've got a lot more control. We would do that as say, five cows per treatment. But we have a whole lot more control than in a, in a, on a commercial farm. So I don't know how many cows you would need to get a reasonable or an accurate number. I don't know.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:36:08)
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:36:13):
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:36:321):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You don't want to bring anything home and you know, if you're really concerned about magnesium, not so much on relativeness, but you're saying these cows might be marginal in magnesium. You can collect urine, just measure magnesium. If there's none in it, you're not feeding enough. There's no question on that because the cow should be... excess magnesium is ends up in urine. If you have no magnesium in urine, you're at the edge. So feed more. So that can be used if you're thinking there might be magnesium issues.
Scott Sorrell (00:36:50):
Guys kind of switching gears just a little bit, kind of taking a look into our crystal balls. You know, I think mineral excretion what goes out in the land is becoming under greater scrutiny. What are we going to have to do, you know, 10, 15 years from now? And I don't know that it's necessarily improving bioavailability. Maybe it is, but, but, but it's optimizing, you know, the mineral utilization. So what you put in the cow, you utilize it, and it does yet minimize what's coming out the backside of the cow. Looking into your crystal ball, what kind of any, any clues in terms of what technologies that might employ, what directions we might go, how we might solve this this problem.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:37:36):
Well, you know, it's what goes out and manure is a function of availability. Unavailable mineral has to go out in feces, but you got to remember all maintenance minerals ends up in feces. All of it. It's just used up and goes out. We can't do a thing about that. And then the other thing we have to remember with minerals is they do things in addition to just the stuff NRC accounts for. You know, there, it helps maintain pH in the rumen that's not a requirement, any place in NRC, but it's definitely needed. And that's going to be at every concentration higher than NRC. So, you know, we can improve bioavailability and that will help some. But it's not going to do a lot just because of where all this stuff comes from. The biggest thing, if, if, if mineral excretion is an issue, the biggest thing is just feed- don't go overboard. That's, you know, some minerals, I don't think'll e ever be an issue. Magnesium, calcium: these are not going to be environmental issues. Phosphorus is in certain areas. It's not everywhere. You gotta be a water thing or close to a surface water. The trace minerals, maybe. But trace minerals are so poorly absorbed, even the best trace mineral is so poorly absorbed. And that we're just going to have to feed close to reduce the excess feeding. But, or, or the other option, and oftentimes this is the cheapest option is use manure properly on soil. You know, don't just dump it on the five acres or 10 acres next to the barn, move it. And that's, that's oftentimes to me, with phosphorus, you know Mat brought up distillers is, is a reasonable source of, of nutrients, reasonably priced. It's high in phosphorus. You know maybe we should just, you know, if we, if we could make, make manure higher in phosphorous, it would make it more valuable to move. So I think manure management is really more important than nutrition with respect to these, these minerals.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:39:55):
And I think Bill hit a lot of those just, just spot on you know, and covered them great. So like, but the interesting thing is, is you know, like here in the Midwest, we had tar spot run through, is that 2019? So two, two corn silage crops that grow you know, and there was a large concern for, so it's, tar spot was one of those little black things, like little black dots that comes along in the plant. And then as the plant died, it just dried it down within three days, you went from a corn silage crop that looked great and green we're ready to go, like we're ready to hit on that 35% dry matter to like, “Oh my God, it rained!” And I missed two days. And now I'm trying to like chop something that's like 45% to 50% dry matter.
(00:40:38):
How am I going to process the corn? You know, and then one of our largest concerns was, is like, how do we get it out of the soil? You know, and actually like one of the best options was as well, like copper and those other nutrients that a little bit volatile could actually end up killing it because it's not, we haven't had a hard freeze even this year, like here just recently a month or 45 days ago, we had a, you know, temperatures in then -20 for over two weeks, or 0 to -20. But we had three feet of snow on the ground, which insulated it well, so we never had a deep, deep freeze. So like, I think it's, it's a, it's a great balancing act. And, and from the science side and that science to applied nutrition side has really done a good job of acknowledging some of the, the overfeeding that we have done in the past.
(00:41:34):
But also acknowledged the fact that there's better sources there. So we're trying to limit some of the overfeeding because we have more bioavailable sources, which is a primary focus of this conversation. So I think it's, it's kind of twofold. A) some of that might be beneficial for the soil. And I think there was at least two or three labs, two or three years ago that had abstracts that ADSA that it said like, okay, even though like soil copper concentrations have come up, we didn't really realize or notice or analyze a difference in the basil concentrations in the corn silages or the haylage. So, to Bill's comments, like, although they're there, they may not be bioavailable in coming up. And, and although they may circulate back through the water pools, they're still not becoming volatilized and being taken up by the plant. So those basil concentrations may or may not have changed.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:42:32):
We had at their research center here where we're kind of limited on land. We can move manure some, but we, we do just what I say we shouldn't do. We tend to concentrate the dairy manure on the dairy fields. And we've been, you know, I've been at Ohio State for 33 years. We sample everything like crazy for 33 years. Our corn silage is eight parts per million copper. And it's been that way for 33 years. We feed reasonable amounts of copper, but we would be about 20 parts per million at the most, we're down now, but it hasn't changed one bit. We do use copper footbaths, again that goes into the lagoon. So that would be, be applied, but we, you know, it it's, we haven't seen anything at the research farm on trace mineral changes in the, the corn silage and the alfalfa.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:43:26):
And I could see that would correlate through what I've seen in the industry. You know, obviously being with Bill and, and focusing on a lot of that. And I think at some point we did the math on on copper sulfate foot baths and how much you'd have to do. It it's just really not an effect.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:43:50):
What about phosphorus, Bill?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:444:51):
We, we have phosphorus issue. And again, when I started there, the phosphorus level on our forage, well, they're not that much higher. They we've, we've cut back on phosphorus. Like the rest of the industry. We probably were, when I started, we were probably at 0.45, and now we're averaging probably 0.35.or 38. So we cut, cut back and, you know, we're shipping off more in milk. But we haven't really noticed, and I haven't looked at this for a little while, but I haven't really noticed much change in phosphorus concentrations in, in corn silage. Alfalfa goes up and down a whole lot more. And I don't know why, but there's much more variability. Part of it is, is obviously maturity of at chopping, but that tends to be more variable, but I haven't seen for any of the minerals over time, just they're very constant on our corn silage.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:44:55:
Okay. Hey, maybe to switch, switch gears here a little bit. The Mat, I know this is part of your work and Bill, Bill, you talked about this some during the, the webinar, but can you speak to how minerals can impact the microbiome?
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:45:12):
Do you want to start at one Bill or do you want, do you want me to go?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:45:13):
You’re, you're the expert on that one.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:45:15):
Well, so, so I'm very thankful that I actually, before this conversation, I, I had a conference call with Dr. Benjamin Winter who helped with this. And then we had a nice heated- uh a nice debate between peers. So really how this, how this idea came about. Again Benjamin Winter was a student with Dr. Perkins and, and they dealt with a lot of microbiology things. And well, you drank enough beers with somebody and you would like to argue, like I do and like Ben does.. you, you start getting into these, but what really hit it off to me was Ben really was studying rumen microbiology. And we, we started going back to I think it was Dr. Church. It's a book that was published in the 1970s. ‘75 was a lot of the, the, the research data from that.
(00:46:08):
And it was talking about the toxicity of copper, the toxicity of zinc on the microbiome effect in the rumen, and then how we can get down to the hind gut and, and different things like that. And I was just like, well, like if it, if it's affecting their rumen then it's gotta be effecting the the know the lower colon. And so I was like, well, why is it toxic? Why is it not? And how do we assess that factor? And it sounds like it's really jumped off since we got there, but Bill brought it up in his talk. Like zinc, it's probably not a factor. I think most of the research, even historically, is going to show you gotta be 500 times the, the factor of zinc and at, at the end of the day, when we really look at this, like, Zinc's not that reactive, even if you look at it on the periodic scale, but like copper really is.
(00:47:02):
And you know, like you start looking at 1975 research, we have different dry matter intakes, different passage rates, different all this other stuff. But like that one really seemed to be the thing that could shock the room. And so and we all know I talk to dairy producers every day, and like most of them don't understand it, you know, to the, to the depths when I start talking about cellulolytics, amylolitics, proteolytics and then protozoa. But I like, it's feeding to a healthy rumen if you want to a dairy cow that's going to produce and do well, you need to have a healthy rumen because it's all about VFA absorption and different things, like different things like that. So when we start looking at the microbiome order, things that it can, they can affect that. And, and copper to me is, is one of those, it's a toxic ingredient.
(00:47:56):
If it's that toxic to a whole animal at that such small amount, why wouldn't it be toxic to the bacterial population that, that, that allows them to do their job? So, circling back to that paper I don't understand much of the microbiome stuff. I'd still be a grad student in Bill's lab if it wasn't for Benjamin Winter and helping with the sequencing and the sampling and, and the you know, analyzing of that data. But I do believe that we're dealing with such... you know, it's bacterial cells in the rumen are charged; in the hind gut they're charged. And somewhere in between there, they, they shift different balances. So in the rumen we're at a fairly neutral pH. And then this is why mineral nutrition differs from a ruminant to a mono- gastric. You know, it needs to get down to the abomasum, which is the true stomach, which is the acidic environment where we can disassociate some of those minerals.
(00:49:02):
And then we have a two-plus charged mineral, that's ready to go onto the proximal, small intestine for a charged pickup by a transporter. And, and that's where it truly goes down- like what is the limiting factor? And I believe Bill, you fielded this question during your talk, one of the things that you thought was limiting between our by-product and our, our forage rations, and you're right. When we formulated that by-product ration, we did it with high pectins, high beta-glucans and things that we felt were differently charged, negatively charged from the mineral that would bind them coming out of the abomasum. But like, often times, I think something that's forgotten in this is passage rate. You know, it's, it's how much time is spent in that abomasum. I've got, I've got a couple of dairies that are very high producing dairies, but moderately high producing.
(00:49:57):
I'll say, you know, like if you look at the complete dairy, it’s in the low nineties. And their high group, you know, might be milking 140 pounds, but their, their dry matter intake is 64. If you want to look at that from a feed efficiency standpoint, that's a very, it's an extraordinary feed efficiency. You know, then like there's maybe a couple of dairies that are in that 94, 95, or even a 100 pounds where their high group is at 72. And then I go back and I start comparing these two. Well, what's different? Because no dairy is the same, and you need to assess them differently, but what's wrong with taking them and looking at them as a group. A lot of times it comes down to me is like, it's the percent forage in the ration. And forage all isn't the same you know, a haylage reacts differently than corn silage.
)00:50:44):
Corn silage is 30%, let's call it 34% starch at the end of the day. So 34% of that forage, I can consider as a concentrate. Now, if I look at haylage, haylage is to me a 100% forage, you know, you talk about ash and all the other stuff. So like it's not only assessing what percent forage is in, but what percent type of forage am I, and how does that affect the passage rate? You know, a lot of these high producing dairies are, at least in my area... You get into central, Northern Wisconsin, or some of these other areas that they don't have as much access to byproducts as I maybe do. And the Southwestern Wisconsin, Northern Illinois area that gets the Indiana/Chicago food byproducts, like that changes the game. But I've got a lot of rations that are sub 45% forage. And we're still talking that it's five, six pounds of dry matter that is haylage, you know. 20 plus pounds, dry matter corn silage that react differently than maybe a 55% for its ration. And because retention time in the rumen is different, which they're feed efficiency is in theory better. So when I start looking at, assessing that from the mineral aspect, it's how much time is that mineral getting in the abomasum and that acidic environment to become available, to be available for those transporters. And then on the contrary you know, if I want to be the devil's advocate is, are those high forage rations spending too much time there post abomasumal that they can, they can bind with some of these negatively charged fiber particles. And I don't have a great answer for you. Bill told me on my way to my defense, that my favorite answer would be, I don't know. And you're, that's correct. I don't know, but I, I do know that I fortify low forage, high-passage rate rations higher than I do higher forage, slower bypass rations in terms of mineral fortification, especially on the trace side.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:55):
Sounds like more research is required, Bill.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:53:06)
I guess I want to just follow up real brief here. What Mat said is, is really important when I started this, a cow ate 40 pounds of dry Matter, and now they're 65 pounds and the cow has gotten bigger, but it hasn't got that much bigger. So they get, that rumen It isn't that much bigger. The intestines aren't that much bigger. So this stuff is flying through this cow and it takes time. Everything takes time. And, and so what, what he said is, is on these really high intake cows that they may have to be fed totally different. And tha,t none of that goes into any of these nutrition models with respect to minerals, none of them. And, and that's something no one's ever looked at is we're going to be really hard to do, but we don't discount. We, you know, we discount digestibility of energy with high intakes. We change the RDP and RUP of diets based on intake. We don't do a thing with minerals because we don't know, we don't know how to do it, but I think that's a very important point that intake has to affect mineral availability. We just don't know how it affects.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:54:16):
So I know we're buttoned up on time and I've been itching to ask this question since we started and got into the introduction. And I watched your talk yesterday, Bill. I had a really great mentor at The Ohio State University that used to ask me this question all the time. And obviously it was a prelude to where NRC is going, and I don't think ever answered it correctly. Historically the NRC has been based off of body weight for maintenance. And in you preluded in your talk too, it's going to go to dry matter intake. And, and this parlays into our conversation that we just had on high intakes and low intakes and blah, blah, blah. When we spoke about before, it was all that, that high producing dairy cow is going to eat more than your, your median or your average.
(00:55:05):
So does that still hold true that like, so essentially the trace mineral requirement is not going to change it. It doesn't matter the concentration, that diet still matters in milligrams or grams of intake. So if I have a diet in my high producing pen, that's, you know, let, let's say it's a 70%- er, 70 pound dry matter intake, and they're milking 140 pounds. And my herd might be balanced at, let's say, 16 to 18 parts per million copper. And I'm just using that as a reference nutrient. Does that mean that I can feed them at 14 because they're still gonna intake more milligrams?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:55:41):
I think you can, for, for those minerals that are not put out in milk in great quantities. Copper is one that doesn't go out and milk very much. So like zinc goes out in milk. So the more they milk, they made more zinc to go out and milk, but copper, manganese, high intake groups: the concentration could be less. I that's, you know, you could just do the math, but then again, that's leaving you constant availability. So it probably would be not quite as much less as what say NRC would calculate, but it would be less so yeah. It could be a lot more, well, some of these new these on a concentration basis in a dry cow diet should be higher than your high cow diet.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:56:33):
Couldn't agree more, but so, so parlaying into that question, again, something that I still can't answer to this day that you often ask is, is, so if I, if we, we always assess the amount of mineral that is excreted in milk, that's excess, right?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:56:58):
It's...I don't know if it's a, well, it can be. I shouldn't say, you know, if you fed at modest amounts, the concentration for most of these are independent of diet. For most of them, if you start feeding extremely high levels, then it's going to go out inmilk. Some of it. Ccopper, for example, if I feed probably between 10 and 20 parts per million of the diet, milk, won't change hardly at all. If I started getting 40 or 50, then the concentration in milk will go up.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:57:30):
As intake goes up, my oxidative stress goes in which then increases my requirement for glutathione peroxidase or, you know, scavenging of oxygen radicals, which is, think selenium, vitamin E, copper base. As a professional, and I don't know the answer to this question, which is why I'm asking you to man, the myth and the legend you know, am I safer in saying that I have the herd balanced at 16 parts per million copper total diet, that's not supplemental, total diet. If, if I'm hedging my bets, do I keep that high cow ration at 16? Or do I have full confidence in thinking that I can run them at 14, which is still well above the 1.2% recommendation?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:58:14):
Well, it would be 14 and actually be pretty close to the requirement. That'd be pretty close. So now I'd probably feed more. But you know, if you know, you're talking about say, if, if I'm just kinda making this number up, but let's say the high cow, 14 parts per million would meet requirements, but for the medium group you needed 16 because of the higher end takes, I wont quail bow, and I just do 16. Cause I don't want all this other inventory and everything else to complicate the system. So some of this, I wouldn't really worry too much about, but you I'm just saying you could do that. But again, it's all gets down to risk. If it was where you're going to get down to 10 or something and I, I probably wouldn't go that low. Even if their NRC was said, yeah, this is fine. Like I said, theoretically, it's still milligrams per day, not concentration. And for those minerals that every, the amount in milk the concentration milk is, is minor compared to maintenance, then you, you could go, concentration could be lower.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (00:59:29):
Well, and in theory, just, just so we're, we're all clear and anybody that's listening is clear, like I'm not talking copper sulfate, I'm talking highly available you know, they, they're going to claim two times as available as copper sulfate. And then I'll give them 150% on a good product. So like this, this would be more of the a ,D or organics or hydroxy type minerals rather than just a copper sulfate.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:59:56):
And again, we're really not talking, you know, when you do the math, we're not talking big between a high group and a medium group. We're not talking big differences in concentrations. And I'm going to say, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just saying you could, you could. But the thing that I think we do need to do that does matter is these dry cows. That many of these are fed because they look at the concentration and say, well, this can't be right. Cause the high group it's 18 and I'm, you know, need 20 in my dry cows. That's that's right. So dry cows don't eat very much. And their maintenance requirement is almost the same as a lactating cow.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (01:00:33):
So I, I'm going to ask a grad student question again. Oxidative stress. I start looking at copper and different things like that. But if I'm talking about growth of the fetus, zinc comes into more play for me and the zinc finger proteins and transcription and all this stuff that like, I know the big words for it, but I don't completely understand you know, like the finer points. You know, so would you be saying it's more of the, this stress type nutrients or more of the growth like nutrients that are probably at the higher concentrations for them.
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:01:16):
And it's, again, the main thing that would differentiate is how much goes out in milk or the concentration in milk.
Dr. Mat Faulkner (01:01:23)
Nothing goes out in milk in a dry cow.
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:01:25):
Well, relative to lactating. Good thing you’re not a graduate student anymore, you might have a few more years to go. But like I said, for those, the, the oxidative, we we'd assume a cow, a dry, we know a cow oxidizes, burns a lot less oxygen than a lactating cow. So theoretically her, her maintenance for these, for these antioxidant nutrients should, should be less than a lactating cow. But we, we don't know, you know, for lactate, we don't know if what we feed for a lactating cow might be plenty anyway. I mean, there might be plenty excess to maintain all these antioxidant systems. So I'd be most worried....zinc is very much deposited in muscle and fetus. It’s also put in milk. So zinc is one that, that the requirement for the fetus is going to be close to the requirements for milk because of, of this. So that's one that's going to be higher, high in a dry cow. Copper, there's some in a fetus, but not a lot, but again, the maintenance requirement for copper is the biggest component of copper. Not milk, not fetus. So it's, it's big for dry cow. Manganese. we don't really know. We know the fetus is very sensitive to low manganese, much more sensitive than the cow, much more sensitive. So that would suggest that these dry cows need more manganese to support the fetus. And I would, that's one where I'm going to say, there's no risk of toxicity. I'm not going to be short. I'm going to feed enough manganese to this dry cow. I'm not going to worry about toxicity. If it costs me an extra penny or two a day, I don't care. It's worth knowing that fetus won't develop properly.
Scott Sorrell (01:03:16):
Gentlemen, this has been fascinating and the time has flown by. Mat, I was surprised when you said that we were getting long in the time and looked at the clock and you're right. So, Stephanie has just flicked the lights, which means that it is last call. So I am having another round and Steph let's get one for the boys as well. With that though, let's... one final question for both of you: what's one or two things that you would leave for nutritionists? Consulting nutritionists, making decisions at the dairy farm: what two things can they take from this conversation tonight?
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:03:56):
I'm gonna let Mat go first here on this,
Dr. Mat Faulkner (01:04:00)
You know, so it's counterproductive for me to give you any good advice. But I'll give you good advice because I have cow's best interests in mind here. And I'll use an example, and Bill and I discussed this yesterday, when we, we talked. Copper is an extremely toxic nutrient. And, and I'd like to think that we've made great strides in reducing the overfeeding. And there's been overfeeding for many years, but, and that was primarily when it's copper sulfate face, which is you know, the Bill talked about the absorption coefficients, the 0.4% to 0.6%. And I think that these companies have made great strides in making a it highly, more bioavailable nutrient. The days of feeding you know, maximum tolerable limit for NRC in 2001 was 40. And I think Bill even mentioned in his talk, like I wouldn't exceed 30 to 35 and there's good data that says like, you can see like some published data via vets that say those levels are still too toxic.
(01:05:03):
We cannot overfeed, cap. Or if you're going to be feeding these highly bioavailable sources and then like, you also need to look at the species, or our breed species would be the correct term, that you're feeding. You know, Jerseys accrete copper in their liver at a more appreciable amount then Holstein cows, or other breeds. It, it's, it's dangerous. And it's, it's a great way to end what could be a promising career for a nutritionist. And so, like, I stress to everybody and for the industry themselves. You know, let, let's, let's take a hard look at copper where we're at, what nutrients we're feeding, what, what types of nutrients we're feeding and let's just, let's just end the headaches. The other thing is, is, and this was a very promising note that I took from Bill's la, is like the overfeeding is, is excessive. So, and not every herd is the same. Like let's, you, you can't, you can't view one herd the same as the other. Trace mineral nutrition needs to be treated like crude protein, like starch, and like all the other nutrients that we feed in a herd, like every herd is different. Every situation is different, and I don't care if they are neighbors. So we need to quit viewing this as a, as a, as a catchall nutrient. And we need to look at this based on situational circumstances and awareness.
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:06:42):
I'd like to just follow up on one thing Mat said. People think selenium is the most toxic mineral we feed. Copper is the most toxic mineral we feed. And when you define toxicity relative to requirement, you can get toxicity at 1.5 times requirement for copper. Selenium has to be at least 10 times. So we, we worry so much about selenium when copper. The other, the other thing here I'd like to mention this was brought up is don't forget water. I think it should be a standard. You don't need nearly as many water samples as silage and hay samples. But once or twice a year, get water, hopefully the nutritionist looks at it and say, well, this is good water, puts it in a file and he's done. But if it's not, there's some, some things we can't do about, you know, because of water treatment, some things we're stuck with, but if it's, you know, high in sodium, I'm going to pull some salt out of the diet. If it's high in sulfur, I'm going to be very hesitant to feed distillers. So, there's things you can, you can do, do with if you know, so I urge people to make that a standard practice. And again, not every week, not every month. My standard recommendation is summer and winter, and that's enough.
Scott Sorrell (01:07:57):
Hmm. Well, gentlemen, this has been a joy. I've, I've really enjoyed the time tonight. As I said before, it flew by Bill. We're going to hate to see it go. But you know, the future's bright, you've left the legacy and young men like Mat. Mat, you're obviously a, a rising star. I've enjoyed getting to know you enjoyed the time we had spending together tonight. So guys, I appreciate it. And thank you for joining us tonight. I'd also like to thank our loyal listeners for stopping by once again, the earth exchange to sit with us just for a while. If you like what you heard, please remember to drop us a five-star rating on the way out. And remember, you can get a really cool t-shirt just by taking a screenshot, sending it to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Please remember to you include your address and size, and we'll get that off to you. Our scientific conversations continue on the real science lecture series of webinars. Visit balchemanh.com/realscience to see upcoming events and past topics. We hope to see you next time here at the real science exchange, where it's always happy hour, and you're always among friends.